PacWest Weekly Awards (Feb. 20)
IRVINE, Calif. – Helping Academy of Art men's basketball to a 2-0 week where they scored above 90 points in both contests including tying their season-high with 98 points in yesterday's win over Holy Names, senior forward
Mike Asante has been picked as the Pacific West Conference Player of the Week after he averaged a double-double with 20.0 points, 10.0 rebounds and 1.5 steals and 1.0 assists per game. The award is for games played from Feb. 13-19.
Starting on Tuesday with a
non-conference shellacking of UC Santa Cruz, Asante
tied for the team-lead in points as he totaled 19 to go with his nine rebounds, both of which were also game-highs. Returning to PacWest play, Asante contributed his second 20-point game of the year
in the commanding win over the Hawks by setting his new season best of
21 points on 8-for-12 shooting (66.7 percent), which he turned into his sixth double-double of the year with 11 rebounds.
While this is the
fifth overall weekly award for ART U this season, it is the first time that an Urban Knight has been named the PacWest Player of the Week since
Stefan Milivojevic was picked twice on
Dec. 16, 2019 and
Feb. 17, 2020 of the 2019-20 campaign (exclduing shortened 2020-21 pod campaign). This is the third weekly award for Asante this season, who was also tabbed as PacWest's Defender of the Week on
Jan. 4 and
Jan. 23, tying him with senior guard
Klay Brown for the second-most weekly awards in a single season (last year:
three-time PacWest Defender of the Week). Asante sits just one award shy of tying the four PacWest Freshman of the Week honors earned by
Jase Harrison during the 2014-15 season.
As a squad, ART U remains just over halfway to the five Urban Knights and
seven total awards earned last season (both program records).
